Sean Bean, left, and Ali Larter pictured during the series premiere of "Legends," which airs Wednesdays at 9 pm beginning on August 13, 2014.

Sean Bean, left, and Ali Larter pictured during the series premiere of "Legends," which airs Wednesdays at 9 pm beginning on August 13, 2014.

Photo: Richard Foreman

'Legends' review: Typical crime stuff, with a twist

1 / 3

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Legends: Dramatic series. 9 p.m. Wednesday on TNT.

Blame it on "Mission Impossible" - not the Tom Cruise film franchise, but the classic TV series about an elite team of crime solvers that starred Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Peter Graves, Greg Morris and Peter Lupus. The show perfected the template for team crime solving that has been used to death ever since.

What makes "Legends" different? Not a lot, but it does have Bean ("Game of Thrones") as an FBI undercover op whose real name is Martin Odum. But to the unscrubbed gaggle of home-grown antigovernment terrorists he's infiltrated, Odum is a mad-at-the-world misfit named Lincoln Dittmann.

In federal undercover-speak, a "legend" is an agent's invented personality, and Odum has fine-tuned his Dittmann legend so precisely, he can slip back into his skin just by donning his '80s-style wire-rim glasses. His voice changes, he begins to stutter and he becomes an entirely different person. Of course, an actor of Bean's caliber can pull this off without breaking a sweat, and that elevates the show above some of its predecessors.

Odum's obsessive dedication to work has cost him dearly. He and his wife, Sonya (Amber Valletta, "Revenge") have split up, and she has primary custody of their son Aiden (Mason Cook, "The Lone Ranger"). Odum always has good intentions of being the dad his kid wants him to be, but usually ends up disappointing Aiden because of his job.

Much of the episodic material is recycled and predictable - Odum and Larter's character are always at odds and have, of course, had a fling, there's a smooth FBI agent (Morris Chestnut) who doesn't trust Odum and is out to undermine him, Sonya probably still loves Odum but resents his self-focus.

This kind of thing could get old fast, but there is something else going on here that piques our interest: Odum is stalked by a mysterious figure who eventually plants an explosive piece of information in his psyche, suggesting that even the identity of Martin Odum may be as much a "legend" as that of Lincoln Dittmann.

The potential of that longer story arc, as well as having Bean back on screen with his head reattached to his torso, may be enough to make "Legends" work despite the familiarity of that crime-solving-team template.